Re: Hull strenght

Posted by Robert N Pruden on Sep 20, 2004

If you glassed the deck and hull inside and out then you ahve a very strong structure. If you have bulkheads and ribs supportign the underside of the deck it's even stronger. A boat built like this can withstand a heck of a lot of messing around with. If you've done all of the above then you have a boat that is very waterproof and capsizing is a non-issue. As well, I agree with everything the others have said so I won't say more about that. Make sure to repair any damage that goes into the wood, there is where your worst risk of damaging your boat comes from: wet wood will eventually delaminate and no amount of glass or epoxy will stop it. On the other hand, if you do damage your boat and the wood gets wet, it can be dried out and repaired. See the link below to what I have done to one of my boats and how I repaired it. The pictures should give you confidence in what you can do with your boat if it gets damaged. PS: don't paddle through nasty rapids, it hurts both the kayak and the paddler.

If you run through my other photo albums you will see that your boat, if built as I described above, is capable of much, even running overtop of ice floes but they do scratch and gouge. My example is exteme so don't let me scare you too much. ;)

Robert N Pruden

In Response to: Hull strenght by Christian on Sep 18, 2004

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